But he was not to suffer alone. On further enquiry, it was ascertained that the chevalier's valet had not gone with him. This fellow, a Frenchman, had taken wing in another direction, and carried off his turtle-dove, too; not one of the full-blown roses of the servant's-hall, but a rosebud, the daughter of one of the bulkiest squires of the Riding; a man of countless beeves and blunders; one of our Yorkshire Nimrods, "a mighty hunter," until club dinners and home-brewed ale tied him to his arm-chair, and gout made him a man of peace and flannels, the best thriven weed in the swamps of Yorkshire. The young lady had been intended for my eldest brother, as a convenient medium of connexion between two estates, palpably made for matrimony. Thus we received two mortal blows in one evening; never was family pilfered more ignominiously; never was amateur play more peevishly catastrophized.

It must be owned, to the credit of "private theatricals," that the play had no slight share in the plot. The easy intercourse produced by rehearsals, the getting of tender speeches by heart, the pretty personalities and allusions growing out of those speeches, the ramblings through shades and rose-twined parterres, the raptures and romance, all tend prodigiously to take off the alarm, or instruct the inexperience, of the female heart. I know no more certain cure for the rigidity that is supposed to be a barrier. At all events, the Chevalier and his valet, probably both footmen, alike had profited of their opportunity. Our play had cost us two elopements; two shots between wind and water, which threatened to send the ship down; two breakings of that heart which men carry in their purse. I laughed, and the world laughed also. But I was then thoughtless, and the world is malicious. My father and the member, though they had "never told their love," felt the blow "like a worm in the bud," and from that night I date the family decline.

Of course, the two whiskered vagabonds could not be suffered to carry off their laurels without an attempt to diminish them, and my father and brother were too much in earnest in their objects to lose time. In half an hour, four post-horses to each britchska whirled them off;—my father, to take the northern road, some hints of Gretna having transpired in the slipshod secrecy of the servants' hall—my brother, to pursue on the Dover road, conjecturing, with more sagacity than I had given him credit for, that as the fox runs round to his earth, the Frenchman always speeds for Paris.

The company soon dispersed, after having stayed long enough to glean all that they could of the family misfortune, and fix appointments for every day in the week to meet each other, and make the most of the whole transaction. But still a tolerable number of the steadier hands remained, who, to show their sympathy with us, resolved not to separate until they received tidings of his lordship's success. I was voted to the head of the table, more claret was ordered, the wreck of the general supper was cleared for one of a snugger kind; and we drew our chairs together. Toast followed toast, and all became communicative. Family histories, not excepting our own, were now discussed, with a confidence new to my boyish conjectures. Charlatanski's career abroad and at home seemed to be as well known as if he had been pilloried in the county town; the infinite absurdity of the noble duke who suffered him to make his way under his roof, and the palpable penchant of his ward, next underwent discussion; until the ignorance of my noble father on the subject, gave, with me, the death-blow to his penetration. The prettinesses which had won the primrose heart of my brother's intended spouse, I found were equally notorious; the Earl's project was as plain as if he had pronounced it viva voce; and before we parted for the night, which did not occur until the sun was blazing through the curtains of our banqueting room, I had made up my mind, once for all, that neither character nor cunning can be concealed in this world; that the craftiest impostor is but a clumsier kind of clown; and that the most dexterous disguise is but a waste of time.

I must hasten to the dénouement. Our excellent friends indulged us with their company, and bored us with their society for a mortal week. But, as Sterne says of the sentimental traveller, scenes of sentiment are always exhibiting themselves to an appetite eager for knowing what the world is doing; the knowledge was contributed with a copiousness which left nothing to learn, and but little to desire. Our guests were of that class which usually fills the houses of noblemen, in the annihilation of life in town; clubmen, to whom St James's Street was the terraqueous globe; guardsmen, on leave of absence for the shooting season, and saturated with London; several older exhibitors in the fashionable circles, who as naturally followed where young guardsmen and wealthy squires were to be found, as flies wing to the honey on which they live; and two or three of the most opulent and dullest baronets who ever played whist and billiards, for the advantage of losing guinea points to gentlemen more accomplished in the science of chances.

At length, on the sixth day, when I really began to feel anxious, an express announced that his lordship had arrived at a village, about fifty miles off, on his way home, wounded, and in great danger. I instantly broke up the convivial party, and set out to see him. To the imagination of a boy, as I was then, nothing could be more startling than the aspect of the habitation which now held the haughty Earl of Mortimer. After passing through a variety of dungeon-like rooms, for the house had once been a workhouse, or something of the kind, I was ushered into the chamber where the patient lay. The village doctor, and one or two of the wise people of the neighbourhood, who thought it their duty to visit a stranger, that stranger being a man of rank, were standing by; and the long faces of those persons, seconded by the professional shake of the doctor's head, told me, that they at least had no hope. It was not so with the sufferer himself, for he talked as largely and loftily of what he was to do within the next ten years, as if he was to survive the century. He still breathed rage and retribution against the Chevalier, and actually seemed to regard the lady's choice as a particular infraction of personal claims. He had pursued the fugitives day and night, until the pursuit threw him into a kind of fever. While under this paroxysm he had met the enamoured pair, but it was on their way from that forge on the Border where so many heavy chains have been manufactured. Useless as challenging was now, he challenged the husband. The parties met, and my father received a bullet in his body, while he had the satisfaction of lodging one in his antagonist's knee-pan. The Chevalier was doomed to waltz no more. But his bullet was fatal.

As I looked round the wretched chamber in which this bold, arrogant, and busy spirit was evidently about to breathe its last, Pope's lines on the most splendid roué of his day involuntarily and painfully shot across my recollection:—

 
"In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung,
The walls of plaster, and the floor of dung;
The George and Garter dangling from the bed,
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies; alas, how changed from him
The glass of fashion!"
 

I say no more of those scenes; a few days, only enough to collect the branches of the family round the bed, terminated every thing. Grief, they say, cannot exist where there is no love, but I was not inclined, just then, to draw subtle distinctions. I was grieved; and paid the last duties, without blame to myself, or, I hope, irreverence in the sight of others. The funeral was stately, and all was over.

Matters now took a new shape at the castle. My brother returned, to find himself its possessor. His journey had been equally unproductive with my unfortunate father's. By dint of bribing the postilions, he had even overpassed the fugitives on the Dover road. But, as he stopped to dine in Canterbury, where he had prepared a posse of constables for their reception, he had, unluckily, been accosted by an old London acquaintance, who had accidentally fixed his quarters there for a day or two, "seeking whom he might devour." The dinner was followed by a carouse, the carouse by a "quiet game," or games, which lasted till the next day; and when my brother rose, with the glow of a superb sunset giving him the first intimation that he was among the living, he made the discovery that he was stripped of the last shilling of five hundred pounds, and that the Frenchman and his prize had quietly changed horses at the same hotel half a dozen hours before.

The young forget quickly, but they feel keenly. The event which I had just witnessed threw a shade over me, which, in the want of any vigorous occupation, began to affect my health. I abjured the sports of the field, for which, indeed, I had never felt much liking. I rambled through the woods in a kind of dreamy idleness of mind, which took but little note of any thing, time included. As mendicants sell tapes and matches to escape the imputation of mendicancy, I carried a pencil and portfolio, and seemed to be sketching venerable oaks and patches of the picturesque, while my mind was wandering from Line to Pole. But in this earth no one can be singular with impunity. The gentlemen were "convinced" that my meditations were heavy with unpaid college bills; and the ladies, from high to low, from "Tilburina, mad in white satin," to her "confidant, mad in white linen," were all of opinion that some one among their peerless selves had destroyed the "five wits of young Mr Marston." I could have fallen on them with a two-handed sword; but as the massacre of the sex was not then in my power, I had only to escape.

There were higher matters to move me. Clouds were gathering on the world; the times were fitful; the air was thick with rumours from abroad; the sleep of the Continent was breaking up, and Europe lay in the anxious and strange expectancy in which some great city might see the signs of a coming earthquake, without the power of ascertaining at what moment, or from what quarter, its foundations were to be flung up in sight of the sun.—We were then in the first stage of the French Revolution!

I resolved to linger and be libelled no more; and being ushered, by appointment, into the library—for the new master was already all etiquette—I promptly stated my wishes, and demanded my portion, to try my fortune in the world.

Our conference, if it had but little of the graces of diplomacy, had much more than its usual decision. It was abrupt and unhesitating. My demand had evidently taken his "lordship" by surprise. He started from the magisterial chair, in which he was yet to awe so many successions of rustic functionaries, and with a flushed cheek asked "Whether I was lunatic, or supposed him to be so?"

"Neither the one nor the other," was my answer. "But, to waste life here is out of the question. I demand the means of entering a profession."

"Are you aware, sir, that our interest is lost since the last change of ministers? that my estate is loaded with encumbrances? that every profession is overstocked? and what can you do in the crowd?"

"What others have done—what I should do in a crowd in the streets—push some aside, get before others; if made way for, be civil; if resisted, trample; it has been the history of thousands, why not mine?"

The doctrine was as new to this son of indulgence, as if I had propounded the philosopher's stone. But his courage was exhausted by a controversy perhaps longer than he had ever ventured on before. He walked to the glass, adjusted his raven ringlets, and having refreshed his spirits with the contemplation, enquired, with a smile which made the nearest possible approach to a sneer, whether I had any thing more to say?

I had more, and of the kind that least suited his feelings. I demanded "my property."

The effect of those two words was electrical. The apathy of the exquisite was at an end, and in a voice of the most indignant displeasure, he rapidly demanded whether I expected money to fall from the moon? whether I was not aware of the expense of keeping up the castle? whether I supposed that my mother's jointure and my sisters' portions could ever be paid without dipping the rent-roll deeper still? and, after various and bitter expostulation, "What right had I to suppose that I was worth the smallest coin of the realm, except by his bounty?"

One query answered them all. "My lord, is it not true that I am entitled to five thousand pounds?"

"Five thousand –?" what word was to fill up the interval I can only guess. But the first lesson which a man learns at the clubs is, to control his temper when its display is not likely to be attended with effect. He saw that I stood his gaze with but few symptoms of giving way, and he changed his tactics with an adroitness that did honour to his training. Approaching me, he held out his hand. "Charles, why should we quarrel about trifles? I was really not acquainted with the circumstance to which you allude, but I shall look into it without delay. Pray, can you tell me the when, the where, the how?"

"Your questions may be easily answered. The when was at the death of our uncle, the where was in his will, and the how—in any way your lordship pleases." The truce was now made; he begged of me, "as I valued his feelings," to drop the formality of his title, to regard him simply as a brother, and to rely on his wish to forward every object that might gratify my inclination.

Our conference broke up. He galloped to a neighbouring horse-race. I went to take a solitary ramble through the Park.

The hour and the scene were what the poet pronounces "fit to cure all sadness but despair." Noble old trees, the "roof star-proof" overhead, the cool velvet grass under the feet—glimpses of sunlight striking through the trunks—the freshened air coming in gusts across the lake, like new life, bathing my burning forehead and feverish hands—the whole unrivalled sweetness of the English landscape softened and subdued me. Those effects are so common, that I can claim no credit for their operation on my mind; and, before I had gone far, I was on the point of returning, if not to recant, at least to palliate the harshness of my appeal to fraternal justice.

But, by this time I had reached a rising ground which commanded a large extent of the surrounding country. The evening was one of those magnificent closes of the year, which, like a final scene in a theatre, seems intended to comprehend all the beauties and brilliancies of the past. The western sky was a blaze of all colours, and all pouring over the succession of forest, cultured field, and mountain top, which make the English view, if not the most sublime, the most touching of the earth!

But as I stood on the hill, gazing round to enjoy every shape and shade at leisure, my eye turned on the Castle. It spoiled all my serenity at once. I felt that it was a spot from which I was excluded by nature; that it belonged to others so wholly, that scarcely by any conceivable chance could it ever be mine; and that I could remain within its walls no longer, but with a sense of uselessness and shame.

If I could have taken staff in hand and pack on shoulder, I would have started at that moment on a pilgrimage that might have circled the globe. But the most fiery resolution must submit to circumstances. One night more, at least, I must sleep under the paternal roof, and I was hastening home, brooding over bitter thoughts, when I suddenly rushed against some one whom I nearly overthrew.—"Bless me, Mr Marston, is it you?"—told me that I had run down my old tutor, Mr Vincent, the parson of the parish. He had been returning from visiting some of his flock, and in the exercise of the vocation which he had just been fulfilling, he saw that something went ill with me, and taking my arm, forced me to go home with him, for such comfort as he could give.

Parsons, above all men, are the better for wives and families; for, without them, they are wonderfully apt to grow saturnine or stupid. Of course there are exceptions. Vincent had a wife not much younger than himself, to whom he always spoke with the courtiership of a preux chevalier. A portrait of her in her bridal dress, showed that she had been a pretty brunette in her youth; and her husband still evidently gave her credit for all that she had been. They had, as is generally the fate of the clergy, a superfluity of daughters, four or five I think, creatures as thoughtless and innocent as their own poultry, or their own pet-sheep. But all round their little vicarage was so pure, so quiet, and so neat—there was such an aspect of order and even of elegance, however inexpensive, that its contrast with the glaring and restless tumult of the "great house" was irresistible. I never had so full a practical understanding of the world's "pomps and vanities," as while looking at the trimmings and trelisses of the parson's dwelling.

I acknowledge myself a worldling, but I suppose that all is not lead or iron within me, from my sense of scenes like this. In my wildest hour, the sight of fields and gardens has been a kind of febrifuge to me—has conveyed a feeling of tranquillity to my mind; as if it drank the silence and the freshness, as the flowers drink the dew. I have often thus experienced a sudden soothing, which checked the hot current of my follies or frenzies, and made me think that there were better things than the baubles of cabinets. But it did not last long.